Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Celebrate your moon time with a tea ceremony!

I attended my first Cree tea ceremony yesterday. I didn't know that Native cultures have tea ceremonies, but it seems that they do, and they are quite old and quite important for building social ties within the community.

The purpose of yesterday's ceremony was to celebrate our grandmothers and all the women in our lives who shaped us. First, you get to purify yourself with the smoke of sage leaves. As the tea concotion is being prepared and poured into cups, the mistress of ceremony sings some simple songs, repetitive and short like mantras. We thought of our ancestors as we held hands, in a circle. Then we sipped the tea, which bound us together.

But the interesting stuff was - as always - the talk. The mistress of ceremony told us about the power of women in moon time - or menstruation. The name itself is touching - 'moon time'. I had to remind myself that night is not perceived everywhere as the time of sin and fault. In a dark night, the moon is seen as the source of light. The night doesn't have to be scary, it can equally be protective. In the end, it all comes down to the social stock of knowledge (as Alfred Schutz called it), those commonly held interpretations and explanations which a group holds: you interpret what you see according to the ways in which you are taught to.

And this gets us back to moon time: a time to celebrate the power of being a woman. How far away from Western Christian interpretive framework, in which menstruation is a constant reminder of impurity, of sin. "Women in moon time are the most powerful", said the mistress of ceremony. "Don't let anyone make fun of your moon time." That's when women are most intuitive and sensitive, that's when they are in touch with their body, that's when they release all the negativity and are re-born in love.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Hello,I am attending my first ever Cree Tea Ceremony tomorrow. I admit I was a tad nervous not knowing what to expect. So I relied on old faithful Google to look up what is said tea ceremony. Reading your story on it was quite inspirational and I am looking forward to my tea ceremony tomorrow.

This Blog

A blog about difference, diversity, multiculturalism... I live in a multicultural world, yet difference is still perceived as divisive, negative and destructive. How to think of difference? How much difference can a person embrace? What are and should be the limits of tolerance? This blog reflects on such issues, mainly challenging categories such as race, ethnicity, gender.

About me

I think of myself as an intellectual, whose task is to think things through. I have opinions, but I try to be aware of the values underpinning them. I'm puzzled and worried by how we construct difference in society: how we categorize people, how we attach labels, and how we ultimately act on these classification principles.

Technocrati

Quote of the month

"To change something in the minds of people - that's the role of an intellectual" (Michel Foucault, "Truth, Power Self: An interview with MF, October 25, 1982)

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it" (Karl Marx, 1845)